Main trends

In Honduras, there is a broad and easily adopted development of mobile money due to two important reasons: The existence of rural regions that are difficult to access and the lack of financial inclusion in these areas. According to the study on mobile banking and mobile money of 2017 by CONATEL named Studio Diners Mobile, in Honduras "mobile banking and mobile money services have allowed the telephone number to become a means to access a bank account for the user, but they also need the involvement of banks and companies mobile which leads to outsourcing problems, for the realisation of payments, purchases, money transactions, receipt of remittances, payroll payments, public services. The coverage of Mobile Telephony is in the 298 municipalities, with technology of 2G (98 percent of the municipalities) and 3G (40 percent), the penetration of the Internet is 36 percent of the municipalities. Mobile penetration is 87.57 percent, indicating the growth potential of this service."

The mobile money market in Honduras is dominated by a Celtel company, subsidiary of Millicom. The brand it has managed to develop is Tigo Money, reaching a good number of clients which provides services for peer-to-peer transfers in different sectors of the economy: small agriculture, tax payments through mobile money, payments for services such as water, electricity, telephony and Internet. Today, most mobile money services are available through multiple interfaces including USSD, APP, STK and IVR.2 Dalberg.

Although the mobile money according to this study is still well under development, it has managed to mobilize a very good amount of money in Honduras. "As regards the total amount of transfers through mobile banking made in 2014, they exceeded EUR3.5m. In the national coin lempiras, representing 0.87 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2014. Additionally, in the last quarter of 2014, the number of transactions reached was 47 percent, of which the Cash in, the Self-topped payments were the main services” (Conatel, 2017).

The geographic location of mobile money users in Honduras is concentrated in the departments of Francisco Morazán and Cortés (61 percent of the total users). Among the possible favourable scenarios influencing the growth of mobile money in Honduras, we can list: a strong segment interested in mobile banking services, financial inclusion, an effective system for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), the opening of private banks to implement the system. The potential threats come from: excessive charges for the use of the system, the economic crisis, lack of standardisation in the systems of use, lack of confidence on the part of the user, lack of technological education of the user.

In 2017, the most downloaded game applications were Parchis Star, words mania Candy Crush.. In the entertainment category, Netflix and Zedge Ringtones are leaders.. Tinder and OkCupid are the favorite applications for dating. For travel, Uber and Google Maps are the most used applications. AliExpress and Amazon are the applications that Hondurans use to buy. When Hondurans want to listen to music using apps, they prefer Spotify and Sing! Karaoke Finally. In the category of food and beverages, Subway and Vivino Wine Scanner are among the trending applications. Up to 63 percent of apps users spend more than two hours a day using them, 96 percent of users access applications by mobile phone. On average, a person is subscribed to 5.3 social networking applications and online purchases are increasingly frequent to acquire goods and services.

Most of the applications used by Hondurans are developed in other countries, mainly in the United States. However, there are some national applications that are on the rise. For example, Honduras Tips is an application with two main characteristics: (i) it is the official tourist guide, (ii) it offers detailed information of the places that every tourist should know, hotels, restaurants, and others. In addition, KioskoOpsa, is the app of the editorial group that brings together several major newspapers and magazines in Honduras, such as La Prensa (1,615,078 Facebook followers and 162,005 Instagram followers), El Heraldo (1,408,519 Facebook followers and 108,845 Instagram followers) and others. Centroamérica App was developed by the Inertia Solutions studio for the Federación de Cámaras de Turismo de Centro América (Federation of Chambers of Tourism of Central America). This app is also ideal for tourists, providing information on tourist places, restaurants and artistic events near your current location, with opening hours and addresses. It offers information on more than three hundred hotels in Central America.